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Erwan DAVOUX, former project manager at the Presidency of the Republic, has advised numerous right-wing political figures internationally.

The asymmetrical war in Gaza, in which the number of civilians killed is appalling, has revealed multiple fractures that will be very difficult to heal.

The first fracture significantly accentuates the already existing gap between rulers and ruled.

Indeed, Israel has largely won the battle of communication with political and economic leaders. Several months of violation of international and humanitarian law, massacres, and even genocide were judged sufficiently plausible for the International Court of Justice to order, on January 26, the taking of precautionary measures to prevent it, without the international community exerting any effective pressure on Netanyahu. The gap is immense with the peoples of the world. They have strongly voiced their opinions and offered their support to the Palestinians during impressive demonstrations, especially in London. This struggle of the Palestinians for the creation of their state echoes the struggles that all peoples have waged in a more or less distant past, whether it be the creation of the nation, the liberation from colonial subjugation, or the regained sovereignty after imperial domination. The Palestinian cause appears just and the Israeli policy of domination, violence, and colonization is completely anachronistic. This rift between rulers and ruled is alive and well everywhere: in the United States, in Europe, and even more so, perhaps, in the Arab world.

The second rift is, of course, the one between the North and the South states. 

Indeed, while the former largely left Israel to do as it pleased, the latter, led by South Africa, brandished respect for international law and humanitarian law in order to oppose and condemn completely disproportionate reprisals. The resounding statements made by Brazilian President Lula on February 19, accusing Israel of committing genocide and comparing the Israeli action to the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis, reinforced this impression of a diametrically opposed feeling.

The Northern countries, for their part, pretended as if the terrorist attack of October 7 justified everything; the South reminded that this conflict did not begin on October 7 and that human lives were worth more. As the excellent tribune of the Archbishop of Algiers, Mgr Vesco, puts it, «if the barbaric violence of Hamas is without excuses, it is not without causes» («La Croix», October 16, 2023). The occupation, colonization, violence and daily bullying, the feeling of being a second-class human being without a future: all the Southern countries have come to terms with the humanly abominable situation of the Palestinians when those in the North content themselves with sterile press releases, the same ones for years, condemning the colonization. The South has prevailed at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) because the January 26 decision is undeniably a thunderbolt: the state led by the descendants of the Holocaust survivors could potentially be responsible for genocide. This position is shaking Western leaders. From those who have always supported Netanyahu’s forward march to those who sell weapons to Israel, complicity in this plausible genocide risks being established.

The third fracture is intra-European.

Where did the Gaullist France go, the one that had an independent foreign policy and that naturally played a role of mediation between the North and the South? Or are the Gaullists the heirs of «the only quarrel worth having is the one between man», of decolonization and the Phnom Penh (1966) discourse? Since 2012, France has opted for unconditional alignment with Israel and even, more precisely, with Netanyahu. As for Germany, it is a fervent supporter of the policy of the Israeli far-right government, thus seeking to buy back its conscience when in reality it is only supporting a massacre or a possible genocide underway. All this while trying to stem the rise of the far-right, denounced as an absolute evil on its own soil but very present in Tel Aviv. The dark side. But the humanist Europe is still moving forward, thanks in particular to the Spaniard Pedro Sanchez, the Belgian and Irish governments, and the positions of Joseph Borell.

The fourth fracture is specific to France and our country is in a unique situation in Europe in this regard.

Today, there is ample evidence that many Franco-Israeli dual nationals have participated in and are still participating in the fighting in Gaza, becoming accustomed to handling and using weapons against civilians. Some do it enthusiastically, «we’re going to massacre them!» launches a man speaking French aboard a tank (in a video that has gone viral on X). What should be done with these French citizens if they wish to return to France? And in the event that the genocide is established by the International Court of Justice, what should be done with the thousands of French citizens who participated in it?

As a new form of anti-Semitism, of Islamist-jihadist origin, spreads, which targets not only Jews but also Christians and Muslims who do not accept being subjected to the rules it claims to impose, the meeting between these two communities on the outskirts of the Republic becomes an explosive cocktail. These radical Islamists, which undermine the foundations of democracy and instrumentalize it, have shown culpable naivety in allowing it to thrive; the «Londonistan» of the 1990s and its various European avatars constitute the epitome of this blindness. It is in Europe that lost young people have gone mad. It is from Europe that they have gone to carry out jihad around the world as soon as a favorable environment opened up. It is Europe that failed to understand the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, assimilating it to Christian democracy.

The French company is caught between two evils, fractured. National cohesion is being undermined and we have pyromaniac firefighters in power. It is the reduction of the French Jewish community to the State of Israel that is partly responsible for the import of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict onto our soil. France will put an end to this confusion when Emmanuel Macron invites Benjamin Netanyahu to commemorate the Vel d’Hiv massacre on July 16, 2017 (even before the 2018 law making Israel the State of the Jewish people). Indeed, Emmanuel Macron prioritized the quality of «Jewish» over nationality. He took the absolute opposite of Jacques Chirac, the great patron of the French Jewish community, but did not confuse it with the State of Israel.. The suicidal episode of the celebration of Hanouka at the Elysee on December 7 will have finally shattered the concept of the secular neutrality of the state and revealed for many Emmanuel Macron’s very clear choice in favor of Israel.

To top it all off, a series of controversial statements have reinforced this attitude, this increasingly unbearable «two-standards« approach. Thus, François Hollande will quietly explain that the French victims of the Gaza Strip could not claim a tribute of the same nature as those of the terrorist attacks of October 7. Finally, Stéphane Séjourné’s reluctance to pay tribute to the French consular officers killed in the Gaza Strip is shocking. Dead in the service of France but forgotten in history?

How can we try to heal these gaping wounds?

The first imperative is to abandon the absurd concept of a clash of civilizations, of Israel being the vanguard of the West or of Christianity in the fight against terrorism or in a major conflict to come. This line of thinking is one that Israel and its zealous supporters are trying to impose in France. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict was not a war of religion; it was a nationalist conflict over disputed lands. It was Israel that took the initiative to give a religious and even messianic dimension to this conflict, both because the current Israeli government is supported by ultra-religious parties, but even before that, Israel deliberately favored Hamas and allowed it to finance itself in order to weaken the Palestinian Authority. Hamas was Netanyahu’s useful idiot just as Netanyahu was Hamas’s useful idiot. A common goal: making the creation of a Palestinian state impossible by turning this conflict into a war of religion.

The second is to treat as normal any apprehension one might have regarding the State of Israel, which is accountable for its actions like any other state.. The Holocaust is a tragedy that will forever mark the conscience of humanity. It came from Europe and not from the Arab world. The Shoah does not justify a derogating treatment granted to the State of Israel by those who caused the misfortune of the Jews. 

The third is to return to the fundamentals of La République. There are only citizens who have the right to have (or not have) a religion of their choice that stem from the private sphere. To prioritize their solidarity with a foreign state or their religion over their citizenship comes to commit themselves to separatism or at best to communalism.

Finally, France and Europe as a whole must return to their founding values. To prioritize human lives based on nationality or religion is to condemn the democratic foundations of an already faltering European project.